Lower Risk of Parkinson's In Men With Higher Uric Acid Concentration

Men with higher urate concentrations had a lower future risk of developing Parkinson's, suggesting that urate could have a protective factor.

HealthDay News — For men, but not women, the risk of developing Parkinson's disease (PD) is lower with higher plasma urate concentrations, according to a study published online in Neurology.

Xiang Gao, MD, PhD, from Pennsylvania State University in University Park, and colleagues conducted a nested case-control study involving 90 214 participants from 3 ongoing US cohorts to examine the correlation between higher plasma urate concentration and the risk of developing PD. A total of 388 new PD cases (202 men and 186 women) were identified and matched to 1267 controls. The authors estimated relative risks after adjustment for covariates, including age, smoking, caffeine intake, and plasma concentrations of cholesterol and ferritin. A meta-analysis was conducted to combine the study data with data from previously published studies.

The researchers found that, comparing extreme quartiles of urate, the multivariate-adjusted relative risks for PD were 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.35 to 1.10; Ptrend = 0.049) in men and 1.04 (95% CI, 0.61 to 1.78; Ptrend = 0.44) in women (Pheterogeneity = 0.001). The pooled relative risks comparing extreme quartiles of urate were 0.63 (95% CI, 0.42 to 0.95) in men and 0.89 (95% CI, 0.57 to 1.40) in women in the meta-analysis.

"We observed that men, but not women, with higher urate concentrations had a lower future risk of developing PD, suggesting that urate could be protective against PD risk or could slow disease progression during the preclinical stage of disease," the authors wrote.